• Princeton sociologist Viviana Zelizer has detailed in her book “Morals and Markets,” for a long time life insurance failed to thrive in the U.S. because people didn’t like the idea of placing a value on human life, and wives often felt as if they were betting on the deaths of their husbands.
• Life insurance became popular only when insurance companies stopped emphasizing it as a good investment and sold it instead as a symbolic commitment by fathers to the future well-being of their families.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/05/08/through-the-roof